CWHs Sonata project

I got the car home late last night.  160 mile drive home and the car did fine.  It runs great and drives straight.  And the seat is pretty comfy.  I did have to replace one tire. 

I was looking for a car similar to this.  I wanted the most comfort I could get while getting north of 30hwy mpgs for around 5k. Well it meets my mpg goals.  And while the seat is comfy it has that unibody Mac strut NVH harshness that I hate.  But I got it for half of what I was willing to spend.  

Mechanically the car is sound.  Just under 122K miles. But it does have some problems I'm going to have to address. 

1. Paint and body work.  The white paint has peeled and faded away to primer in many areas.  The roof just above the windshield and rear window has rust.  The passenger rear door has been hit and there's several gouges in the bumper covers.  

2. The interior.  The dash is cracked badly and looks like a poorly fitted jigsaw puzzle.  Everything is coated in a heavy layer of smokers film.  There are cigarette burns in the seats and door panels.  

3. The drive home convinced me that I can no longer live without Android Auto. An aftermarket head unit will address that but I may decide to revamp the entire sound system. 

4. I may be willing to try some crazy things to improve the ride quality.  We'll see. 

First thing I'm going to do is pull the seats and give the interior a much needed deep cleaning.  It's 50° and raining so that'll have to wait for another day. 

GOODONYA! The memory of CWH rides on! I felt a kinship because we  both lived in Ft. Lauderdale at one time.

Keep in mind, it's double wishbone front, and multi-link rear.

The upper mounts are kind funky, though, in that the strut mounts into a rubber isolator that has a metal insert, and that the mounts to the body.

I'll see about dig up my thread from 2018 where I messed around with a V6 of the same chassis for OneLap, before deciding to take my TL instead.

In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :

I'd be interested to read that.  

Acquired the car here:   
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/sleepyhead-bobzilla-and-john-welsh-do-onelap2018/136470/page7/

Sheared a lug, and threw in the towel here:   
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/sleepyhead-bobzilla-and-john-welsh-do-onelap2018/136470/page20/

Tried to do Bilstein B-4's, H&R lowering springs and SPC upper adjustable ball joints.  The combination is really bad because the SPC's end up extending the upright to upper arm length, and the lowering springs yank out too much shock length.  Ended up blowing out an upper mount, and drove ~20 miles home with the top of the front pax shock massaging the under side of the hood.

Page 17 has this photo of the front shock assembly:

edit, page 16 has these pics of the front suspension:   

Wow, what I can see of it really looks closely inspired by '90s Hondas. 

Yeah, other than the upper mount, it looks pretty similar to my 3G TL's suspension

actually, I've got the OE shocks for it, still around, I think?  If have dimensions of 3G TL / 7Gen Accord end up being helpful.

In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :

That's an interesting setup.  I haven't started researching yet but that's helpful.  I'm going the opposite direction though.  I'd like this thing to ride like a 70s Cadillac, handling be damned.   I have found an air ride setup though. I'm just unsure of how air setups ride.  When I've asked people in the past the typical response is "fine" or "good". Not quite descriptive enough for me.  I need to find one to drive or at least ride in before I make that commitment. 

In reply to Nick Comstock :

Something else to keep in mind is it has a platform mate, ala Camry/Avalon.  For Hyundai it's the Sonata/Azera.  An '06-10 Azera suspension swap might give you more of the floaties you're after for cheaper than an air setup?

In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :

Unless I'm missing something they use the same part numbers for strut assemblies.  But it's not like the ride is terrible.  Just not up to my unreasonably high standards.  It'll be a while before I worry too much about the ride quality. 

I'm here for the warm fuzzies!

Hyundai clan! Looking forward to big things.

Well I had to go ahead and give it a quick bath.  I've never personally seen a car with paint this bad.  It's like the color coat had no adhesion whatsoever with the primer.  I know various manufacturers have had issues like this in the past.  I've just never had to deal with it.  I'm pretty sure I can strip it down to the primer with my little harbor freight pressure washer.  

I'm waiting on the interior until my extraction machine gets here. 

Here's some pics. 

So, my newly acquired civic... that I paid too much for... has some of the same issues.  I went out and bought a $20 Black & Decker garment steamer to follow this example on removing the bubbling rear tint:

it's done pretty well, but I may have some issues when I get to the bottom.  Also, it seems like it's been helpful lifting... "dirt" that has accumulated in the headliner over time.

dunno if you've got a similar "extraction machine" on the way.  But, looking forward to what you end up doing.

In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :

I was gonna use the black garbage bag method and take advantage of the florida sun but maybe I'll give that a try.  

I got 150 Amazon gift card from work and I was trying to decide what I wanted to get with it when I remembered I've been wanting a Bissell little green machine for doing car interiors for years so that's what I decided to get.  

Honda's have all kinds of issue with white paint peeling. There must be something different about white paint that makes it less likely to fully bond.

I had been looking forward to today all week.  All of my assorted tools I had ordered were in and the forecast was 80 and sunny.

The plan was to pull the seats out and get the interior all cleaned up and ready to go. The only thing I didn't take into account was the fact the it was new years eve last night. The neighbors started celebrating at midnight and went for a solid hour. That was enough to wake me up and keep me awake until 6:30am, at which point I promptly fell asleep and didn't wake up until noon. 

There went my whole weekend plans. 

Anyway here are some before pictures. I don't believe pictures truly convey the amount of dirt that was in this interior. Just imagine these pictures as the accurate depiction of how they looked but they felt like there was a layer of sticky goo all over everything. 

Anyway you get the point. I've dealt with much worse but this is pretty nasty. 

Worked well into darkness and got a lot done but only got a couple pictures of the progress. Supposed to have some rain come in tomorrow afternoon so I hope I can finish everything up before then. 

The good lord willing and the creek don't rise I'll have a completed update tomorrow. 

The seats cleaned up nicely!  I've had great luck in the past with the Little Green Machine on car interiors.  The secret seems to be to use more water than you think might be reasonable.  I keep additional water containers and spray bottles of water to really soak the cloth.  Add to that a scrub brush and the cleaner known as Tuff Stuff.  

Paint/Vinyl.  

Im not sure if you intend to really go down the route of paint improvement but I'll share my experience.  My 2016 Challenge car was a Florida minivan.  It had horrible roof paint.  These two "stipes" are actually faided paint on the roof.

On this gray van, my intention was to two-tone the car by covering the bad spots with vinyl.  That took me to this:

and ultimately, this: 

I'm not saying that you have to go full livery but you could just stop at the two tone version.  I did not real surface prep other than I flaked off the biggest spots of pealing clear coat and the wiped the car down with rubbing alcohol to remove wax.  

I did tthe whole thing in my driveway, just needing to avoid the hottest portion of the day so the metal surface temps weren't too high.  

If looking close, you can still see through the vinyl the imperfections of the surface, like bad clear coat but I was going for a 20ft solution not something that would make it perfect.  I think I remember that the blue on this van represents a $150 budget hit...cheap.  Also, I didn't have to take the vehicle out of commission to do the job.  I could add a little blue every day until I was done but still drive the car (with oddly some blue on it) every day.  

If I were to put vinyl on your car, I would get some of this knifeless tape and run that line right at your pin stripe, so as to hide the pin striping.  But, that pin striping will give you a great guide for where to set the line.  

My blue was Vvivid brand in Matte Metallic Blue (Ghost) that I bought through Amazon.

Dented door.  Maybe fix it, maybe leave it???

But, if fixing, cheap, I would just source a door off car-part.com.  

Near you, this yard, lists the door for $125 but the picture given shows the sliver door handle of the upper trim level.  

The site also lists that this yard, closer to you has a white door.  No picture is given and no price is given.  

For me, on a car like this, I'd probably replace the door and just leave the dented fender portion dented and call it good enough.  

In reply to John Welsh :

Yeah I saw those doors the other day.  That's the route I'm going.  But I may do a little hammer and dolly work on that crease.  I think I can make some improvements. 

Far from perfect but vastly improved. 

That looks a lot better! Losing that greasy coating of cigarette tar probably feels and smells so much better, too. 
 

What's your plan for the rust - particularly where it gets under the window seals??